Shoko had a use for Suzi. He wasn’t kidding himself about that. Warner was dead. The Blade Queen was either going to try for immortality for herself, which would only make sense, or she was going to try for magic trick number two, which was resurrecting the dead.
Dax had a feeling that for whatever reasons, and she probably had more than one, Shoko was going to go for magic trick number two, which required copious amounts of fresh blood.
And he had to wonder, really, who in the hell dreamed this stupid shit up? Like life wasn’t complicated and mysterious enough without that crap.
Geezus. His life was plenty complicated, and if a guy wanted mystery, well, hell, that’s why God created women. All the mystery a guy ever needed was wrapped up in a soft mouth and a racetrack’s worth of curves.
He throttled down for a tight turn up ahead, pointing the bow and letting the back end of the boat slide in behind before he gunned it again.
Two more winding turns in the river later, he saw the gunboat, and it was empty. Twin Mercs didn’t leave any chance for a silent approach, but that hadn’t been his plan. He wanted Shoko to know he’d found her. He wanted her attention on him as quickly as possible. He wanted her to be faced off with him, not Suzi-and sweet geezus, he wasn’t a second too soon. There was movement in the grassy field, low and to the ground, and the furtiveness of it just about stopped his heart.
“Shoko!” he called out. His next move was to pull the rock-crystal eye out of his pocket and hold it high in the air. “Shoko!”
He didn’t tie off the boat; he ran the bow up close to the shore and kept the engines running.
“Shoko!”
In the fading light, he saw more movement, bodies moving, but he couldn’t tell which was Shoko and which was Suzi-and he was praying one of the moving bodies was Suzi. There was a small mound in the field that looked like a nonmoving body, like a dead guy-and that would most likely be Erich Warner.
Except that was Shoko up there, and knowing her, she could have killed half a dozen people by now.
“I have the eye!” he shouted.
All movement stopped, and he hoped to God that he had her attention.
“You’re running out of time, Shoko. If you want the eye, you need to give me the woman now!” He was still shouting, making himself very clear. “If you shoot me, the eye goes over the side.” He had very deliberately moved his hand over the river, and was leaning in that direction.
“She’s hurt, Killian. If you want her, you’ll have to come and get her.”
Hurt.
He took a breath, tried to slow the racing of his heart.
“Show her to me, Shoko. I need to see that she’s still alive.”
He wasn’t going to tell her again that she was running out of time. She knew it. The sun was dropping like a cannonball now, with the full moon scheduled to come into view over the eastern horizon as soon as the last rays of sunlight faded from the western sky.
“Your bitch, Killian,” Shoko said, and two dark forms rose up from the ground in the deepening gloom.
He jumped off the boat and started forward.
“I want to hear her voice, Shoko.” It was an old negotiator’s trick, to keep using someone’s name. There was nothing like a person’s name to get and hold their attention.
After the last command, he stopped. He could hear the river and the rocking of the boat, hear the waves lapping against the hull, and he waited to hear Suzi’s voice.
“Dax… Dax…”
That was his girl all right. He started across the grassy field, moving quickly but carefully.
“Let her go, Shoko, and you can have the eye. I-” His next words were cut off by a keening scream that rent the air, a wailing cry of pain, more agony than he’d ever heard.
The two women crumpled back to the ground, becoming nearly indistinguishable from each other, and he started to run.
“Nooooo…” the voice cried. “Noooooo…”
It was Shoko.
“Which one? Warner, Warner…which one?”
At twenty-five yards, he could see her clearly on her knees at Warner’s side, wailing. Suzi was handcuffed, half sitting, half leaning on the ground, free from Shoko’s grip but not running away.
He ran to her side and dragged her to her feet. She was nearly limp. He held her close and backed off, his gun drawn, but Shoko barely seemed aware of them.
“Nooooo…” she wailed. “Warrrrrrner.”
She looked to the east and grew even more frantic, her crazed eyes coming to rest on them.
“The crystal, give it to me, hurry, hurry.” She reached out her hand.
Erich Warner’s body had been arranged, straight and true on the ground, the Memphis Sphinx on his chest, facing him, facing east. Shoko had duct-taped his hands to the statue, and she had a pile of brightly colored pills poured out onto his handkerchief where she’d laid it on the ground.
Okay, this was weird, and oddly compelling. It was also, Dax realized, an act of utter desperation, and he wondered for a moment if it was love motivating her. Then he thought not. He tossed her the crystal eye, keeping Suzi close, and wondering what in the world Shoko was going to use for blood. Warner was covered in it, but unless he’d had a bad accident on the way up the river, Dax figured most of what he was seeing had come from rolling around in the bottom of the boat with a guy who’d had his throat slit.
He kept backing off. He could have shot her. He was more than ready, but there was this little tug of curiosity he couldn’t deny, and he had a feeling that this was going to be one of those times when things just took care of themselves.
He hadn’t forgotten about the envelope in Warner’s jacket, but for all the trouble he’d gone to, the months of searching, he wanted to see this thing through. He wanted to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it was all a bunch of crap.
So he backed off, and he didn’t take his eyes off Shoko, or his finger off the trigger of his.45, and every time she looked to the east, he wondered at the stark fear in her eyes.
She pulled a knife out of a sheath on her belt, and he took up the slack on his trigger.
She looked to the east again and placed her left hand on top of the statue. When moonlight flooded the grassy area, coming up over the tops of the trees and pouring across the wide spot in the river before flowing up the shore, she slashed her wrist, deep.
A cry left her, a cry of such pain, he nearly reached for her. But he didn’t. He watched as her blood spurted out of her artery and poured over the statue, and when the moonlight struck the crystal eyes, he was held in place, enthralled by their glittering luminescence.
It was beautiful, an amazing sight to see, but it wasn’t magic.
A minute passed, then half a minute more with Shoko’s life pouring out of her. Next to him, he felt Suzi take more of her own weight on her feet, felt her come around a little bit, and the two of them stood quietly in the moonlit field and watched Shoko, the Blade Queen of Bangkok, die, and they watched Erich Warner stay as dead as he’d ever been.
But Dax didn’t lower his pistol, not for a second, and when Shoko finally collapsed on her dead lover, he knew the world had suddenly become a better place.
“I’m taking that Sphinx,” Suzi said at his side, and it was a statement, not a question.
“Yes.” It was hers. She’d more than earned it. Even if he’d had a use for the damn thing, he’d have let her have it. “Are you okay?”
He stepped back up to the bodies, bent down, and pulled the envelope out of Warner’s jacket. He shoved it way down deep in the cargo pocket on his pants before buttoning the pocket.